The cropping of digital photographs plays a key role in their ultimate composition. By appropriately cropping a digital photograph, a desired aspect ratio and composition can be achieved. Most commercial photographic editing software provides for either manual cropping of photographs by a user or automatic cropping to a desired aspect ratio. When a photograph is automatically cropped, the software typically crops so that the center of the photograph is at the center of the cropped photograph. Such automatic cropping will not necessarily provide a more desirable composition of the photograph and may indeed reduce the desirability of the composition. Although manual cropping can result in a desired composition with the desired aspect ratio, it can take a user a considerable amount of time to crop all the photographs that can be taken and stored by a digital camera with even a modest amount of memory. Moreover, an amateur photographer may not know how to crop a photograph to provide a visually pleasing composition.
When an experienced photographer wants to manually crop a photograph, the photographer may employ various “rules” of photography. One such rule is the rule of thirds. According to the rule of thirds, a photograph is first divided into thirds both vertically and horizontally. The rule of thirds specifies that a harmonious balance within a photograph is achieved when the objects of the photograph are aligned with the vertical and horizontal lines that divide the thirds, or their intersections. Another such rule is the golden mean rule. According to the golden mean rule, the most aesthetically pleasing aspect ratio of a photograph is when the ratio of the width to the height is the same as the ratio of the height to the width plus the height. This ratio occurs when the aspect ratio is approximately 5 by 8.